Search results for "haptic"
showing 10 items of 47 documents
A Low-Cost Multi-Modal Auditory-Visual-Tactile Framework for Remote Touch
2020
International audience; Haptic technology for human augmentation provides gains in ability for different applications, whether the aim is to enhance "disabilities" to "abilities", or "abilities" to "super-abilities". Commercially-available devices are generally expensive and tailored to specific applications and hardware. To give researchers a haptic feedback system that is economical, customisable, and fast to fabricate, our group developed a low-cost immersive haptic, audio, and visual experience built by using off-the-shelf (COTS) components. It is composed of a vibrotactile glove, a Leap Motion sensor, and an head-mounted display, integrated together to provide compelling immersive sens…
Impact of fabric end-use knowledge on handle perception
2006
Abstract The objective was to determine whether the knowledge of the fabrics' end-use may impact the way textile experts organize their haptic perception. Two groups of 10 textile experts were asked to freely sort the same set of 25 fabrics in two different contexts. The first group was informed that the set of fabrics would be used to make dresses and the other one that they would be used to make sportswear. Both groups also rated the appropriateness of each fabrics for each end-use. Results did not show any effect of the end-use context. The two perceptual spaces were basically the same and accounted for appropriateness of use similarly. If confirmed, this result indicates that descriptiv…
Reimagining cultural memory of the arctic in the graphic narratives of Oqaluttuaq
2021
The Greenlandic oral story-telling tradition, Oqaluttuaq, meaning “history,” “legend,” and “narrative,” is recognized as an important entry point into Arctic collective memory. The graphic artist Nuka K. Godtfredsen and his literary and scientific collaborators have used the term as the title of graphic narratives published from 2009 to 2018, and focused on four moments or ‘snippets’ from Greenland’s history (from the periods of Saqqaq, late Dorset, Norse settlement, and European colonization). Adopting a fragmentary and episodic approach to historical narrativization, the texts frame the modern European presence in Greenland as one of multiple migrations to and settlements in the Artic, ra…
A cultural heritage experience for visually impaired people
2020
Abstract In recent years, we have assisted to an impressive advance of computer vision algorithms, based on image processing and artificial intelligence. Among the many applications of computer vision, in this paper we investigate on the potential impact for enhancing the cultural and physical accessibility of cultural heritage sites. By using a common smartphone as a mediation instrument with the environment, we demonstrate how convolutional networks can be trained for recognizing monuments in the surroundings of the users, thus enabling the possibility of accessing contents associated to the monument itself, or new forms of fruition for visually impaired people. Moreover, computer vision …
Is backward disequilibrium in the elderly caused by an abnormal perception of verticality? A pilot study
2007
International audience; OBJECTIVE: We hypothesised that backward disequilibrium (BD), defined by a posterior position of the centre of mass with respect to the base of support, could be caused by a backward tilt in the perception of verticality. METHODS: The relationship between BD, the perception of verticality, and the history of falls in 25 subjects aged 84.5+/-7.4 years was analysed. An original ordinal scale, the BD scale (BDS), was used to quantify BD. Postural (PV) and haptic verticals (HV) were measured in sagittal plane. RESULTS: BDS scores closely correlated with the number of falls (r = 0.81, p =10(-5)). The more the PV was tilted backward, the greater the BDS scores (r = -0.95, …
Understanding of tactile pictures in visual impaired children
2015
The present PhD aims at understanding how Visual Impaired (VI) children process the tactile pictures that illustrate the tactile books specially designed for them. Our work is organized around two main axes of analysis. The first axis concentrates on the child who explores the tactile images, while the second axis focuses on the impact that the properties of these images can have on children’s haptic processing. Our researches included children presenting various degrees of visual impairment but without any associated disorders (in particular, without any cognitive delay), distinguishing early blind children from children with low vision. We also compared their performance with those of sig…
Enabling independent navigation for visually impaired people through a wearable vision-based feedback system
2017
This work introduces a wearable system to provide situational awareness for blind and visually impaired people. The system includes a camera, an embedded computer and a haptic device to provide feedback when an obstacle is detected. The system uses techniques from computer vision and motion planning to (1) identify walkable space; (2) plan step-by-step a safe motion trajectory in the space, and (3) recognize and locate certain types of objects, for example the location of an empty chair. These descriptions are communicated to the person wearing the device through vibrations. We present results from user studies with low- and high-level tasks, including walking through a maze without collisi…
Ephaptic coupling of myelinated nerve fibers
2001
Numerical predictions of a simple myelinated nerve fiber model are compared with theoretical results in the continuum and discrete limits, clarifying the nature of the conduction process on an isolated nerve axon. Since myelinated nerve fibers are often arranged in bundles, this model is used to study ephaptic (nonsynaptic) interactions between impulses on parallel fibers, which may play a functional role in neural processing.
The affect of contact force sensations on user performance in virtual assembly tasks
2007
International audience; Abstract The development of a realistic virtual assemblyenvironment is challenging because of the complexity of the physical processes and the limitation of available VRtechnology. Many research activities in this domain pri-marily focused on particular aspects of the assembly task such as the feasibility of assembly operations in terms of interference between the manipulated parts. The virtualassembly environment reported in this research is focusedon mechanical part assembly. The approach presented ad-dresses the problem of part-to-part contacts during themating phase of assembly tasks. The system describedcalculates contact force sensations by making their inten-s…
Importance of force feedback for following uneven virtual paths with a stylus
2021
It is commonly known that a physical textured path can be followed by indirect touch through a probe also in absence of vision if sufficiently informative cues are delivered by the other sensory channels, but prior research indicates that the level of performance while following a virtual path on a touchscreen depends on the type and channel such cues belong to. The re-enactment of oriented forces, as they are induced by localized obstacles in probe-based exploration, may be important to equalize the performance between physical and virtual path following. Using a stylus attached to a force-feedback arm, an uneven path marked by virtual bars was traversed while time and positions were measu…